"It seems like you need help."

"Oh - sorry - " She checks whether she's blocking anything. She isn't, she's just crying. "I mean - I'm fine, I just. I just found out my niece is dying. I guess I'm not fine, but there's nothing really anyone can do. I guess."

"Try me. I specialize in problem-solving."

"It's just, um - it's this degenerative disorder that affects the nervous system, I already forgot the whole name. I have it written down somewhere. They said there are experimental treatments but there's nothing commercially available, certainly nothing insurance will touch. And they might not work anyway, they're still researching it. It's rare, I guess. So it's just, um. We wait now. And try to, uh, give her whatever fraction of a decent life you can have in ten years when you're slowly losing the ability to move or speak or do anything."

"That's awful."

"It's - yeah. Thanks. I'm sure lots of people have problems like this, though."

"That's why my job is fixing problems." A business card appears between two perfectly manicured fingers. "I can't do anything about the medical side of things but I might be able to help with the financial side."

" - thanks. Are you an insurance person, or...?"

She takes the business card. 

"Many wealthy people find that they have particular needs for trustworthy people. Someone to start a business with, or raise their children after their spouse has died, or ward off fortune hunters... I've even found help for one client whose grandfather's will said he had to be married for a year to inherit. So I'm always on the lookout for people who can help make mutually beneficial relationships."

" - you've been speaking to me for maybe twenty seconds."

"I also don't like it when adorable children die! I want to help if I can."

" - OK. Sorry. I just - thanks. I'll - need more information about what exactly this is?"

"I know you probably don't want to do a business meeting right now, so you can check out our website, okay? And give me an email if you decide you want to talk to us."

She nods. "Right. OK. Thanks."

So she spends a while getting herself together, and she takes Zana and Connor home, and she tells Zana a story about a brain in a jar that all the other weird future cyborg people still loved even though he didn't have any arms or legs to move, and she looks up the website on the card.

The good news is that Billionaire Marriage Brokers is definitely a legitimate company that has arranged marriages for many extremely wealthy people! There are interviews with satisfied clients, who are definitely real people who definitely got married.

The bad news is that they pretty much exclusively arrange marriages.

The good news is that Karen would earn ten thousand dollars for two days of interviews.

Hahahahahaha.

- at least if it has news coverage and stuff then it's possibly not the kind of thing where you go there and then they pull guns on you and you find out that actually this is the kind of sex trafficking ring where nobody marries you, and actually you get kidnapped and sent to some obscure foreign country where you don't speak the language and the authorities are pretty unconcerned with the fact that you have a four-year-old to take care of at home. She's going to tell her cousin to call the police if she doesn't call back within twenty-four hours of going anywhere near any of their offices anyway.

Even assuming that it's about the least nefarious thing that it could possibly be, there is no way that anyone who talks for her for any length of time is going to want to marry her. She has no idea what she would do if they did. Probably die.

But hey. Ten thousand dollars covers the copays on the diagnostic tests.

She writes an email.

A secretary gets back to her within an hour to schedule the dates!

Hahahaha this is definitely a scam. A scam that occasionally actually marries real people in vaguely beneficial arrangements, but mostly so that it can cover up its scamminess. But she doesn't have a ton of other ideas, other than 'become JK Rowling tomorrow', so hey.

She gives her cousin very clear instructions about when to check on her and under what circumstances to start putting together a search party.

She calls in sick to work and arrives to the interview twenty minutes early.

Pauline smiles at her!

"Welcome. How is your niece doing?"

"Better than me, I think. I tried to explain the basics of her and she kept insisting that she'd always be able to move just fine as long as she thought very hard about it."

"She sounds adorable! Do you help raise her?"

And the correct answer to this question is - "Mhm! Her mother passed away a few years ago, so I've been looking out for her and her brother, but the whole family helps. They're very sweet."

"I'm so sorry to hear that! It sounds like you've had a rough couple of years. I hope that I can make them better."

"Thank you! I appreciate the concern."

"So I'll walk you through the next couple days. We're going to get a bunch of people in to ask you some questions. Some of them are going to seem kind of weird, but I promise you all of them are part of our process. You should be as honest as you can and not try to give the answers that you think are the right answers. You'd be surprised about how many things aren't dealbreakers in this business! But honesty and integrity absolutely are. We'll be independently verifying as many of your statements as we can, and if we've discovered that you've said something false we won't match you."

She's a bad liar anyway. Also, hey, not actually trying to pass through this process, so it'll be super convenient when her honest answers cause them to filter her out!

"OK! Thanks so much."

"It's really in your best interest too. If we know the truth about you, we're far likelier to make a good match, and then you'll get paid for much longer."

"That absolutely makes sense," she says, seriously, after deciding not to comment on how absurd the idea of mostly caring about compatibility with your spouse for the sake of getting paid by them is.

...she will just have to think about whether it's still prostitution if you're married later, after she's been filtered out and it's a purely academic question.

"Okay, then, let's get started!"

She asks Karen a bunch of easy questions about her life to get her settled and build rapport.

She can answer questions! She doesn't lie at any point, although now that she's actually in an interview it's pretty hard to remember that she's trying not to pass it. She offers an accurate but particularly sympathetic report of the basics of her life, with occasional mild self-deprecation as a proof of modesty and lack of arrogance. That's not really calculated, she just sort of does that.

Pauline is good enough at people to notice that!

Pauline is replaced by a man who wants Karen to recite strings of numbers backwards and tell stories based on pictures and guess what people's emotions are from their eyes. 

Oddly accurate but very slow on the numbers, very creative and with excellent presentation on the stories, bad at emotions. Also convinced she's doing pretty badly at all of these. But that's OK because she isn't invested in the outcome.

The man does not reveal how well she's doing!

She's shown into a different room. "We're going to take your pictures now, dearie," a woman wielding a makeup brush says. "You'll get to keep them afterward!"

Neat! She has like zero pictures of herself of any sort. Don't think about the fact that they're going to be shown to weird rich people who can't get dates. (She really shouldn't throw stones there.)

"Don't you worry about a thing," the makeup artist says, running the brush over Karen's cheekbones, "it's all about making you look your best."

This is sort of weird and vaguely uncomfortable, but luckily you don't need to have complex opinions on things to sit still while other people make decisions about how your face should look. She thanks the makeup artist, though, she seems like she's doing her best.

The makeup artist is definitely doing her best!

The photographer is really aggressively positive.

"You look great, sweetie! You're doing wonderfully! Smile for the camera!"

This is also sort of weird and vaguely uncomfortable! But they all just seem so sincere about whatever it is they're doing. She will smile.

The day wraps up with Karen being asked for an extensive number of work and personal references!

"Don't worry," Pauline assures her, "we take your privacy very seriously."

She is not sure that she actually knows that many people. Maybe one of the librarians, maybe one of the old ladies from church whose house she cleans sometimes, maybe one of her coworkers at the nursing home, maybe maybe that elderly novelist who lives in the independent living unit? She should probably provide evidence of at least one friend who is not from the internet? Unfortunately she doesn't have contact info for any of her acquaintances from church, so she puts down one of her vaguely reasonable friends from high school who she's pretty actually went on to college and didn't commit any notable crimes or anything.

Good thing none of this matters!

"See you tomorrow!" Pauline says with incredible cheeriness.

She calls in sick to work again the next day and, again, arrives twenty minutes early.

She spends the morning talking to Pauline and answering a bunch of extremely ridiculous questions. 

How lucky are you, and why? If you were an animal what animal would you be? What is your worst houseguest-related story? What is your least favorite thing about humanity? What would your ideal bedroom look like? How many square feet of pizza are eaten in the US every year? What's the most irrational reason you've liked someone? What insecurity do you have that would shock someone if they knew about it?

Luck's not real but she feels like people are nicer to her than warranted, which is sort of the same thing as being lucky. She's technically an animal already but feels a sort of affinity for bees, because they work together and are unusually communicative and they make honey even though throwing up food for their young seems kind of unpleasant, and also it's sort of sad and poetic how they work themselves to death in like three weeks. Humans are really bad at doing things they know are good for them, which is maybe even sadder than if they didn't know at all. Probably small and cozy with a loft bed to hide in and some gaming posters on the wall, everything minimalist enough that it isn't hard to keep clean but not so empty that it looks bare. Probably like five hundred million, low confidence. She thinks it's sort of rational to like everyone, because everyone has good qualities, but she doesn't always succeed at this. 

She's pretty sure people who know her would not be shocked to hear that she was insecure about literally anything.

Pauline smiles and says "hm" a lot and totally fails to reveal the purpose of the test or whether Karen is doing well on it. 

Very convenient how it doesn't matter at all.

Answering random questions is sort of fun when you care nothing at all about the effects of your answers.

"You'll get to leave a bit early this afternoon because you're Baptist!" Pauline says cheerfully.

(Karen did not at any point indicate that she was Baptist.)

"Personally non-denominational, actually, but it's an easy mistake to make," she says, in favor of asking why this means she can leave early.

"Oh, oops! Guess I'm not as good as I thought I was."

"My parents are real Baptists, if it makes you feel better!"

"It does! --Normally, we have a session that explores sexuality, but because of your values I wouldn't give you any job that involves sex. Luckily, it seems like you'd do fine pretending to be dating a gay man so his family won't disown him, we get a lot of those."

"I could probably theoretically do this."

She was actually kind of expecting the whole being married thing to involve sex, but if she's wrong then that's cool? Not that this is going anywhere anyway, because it definitely is not.

"It's 100% fine if you're not comfortable with this, but a request we get surprisingly often is 'good hugs.' Do you mind if I hug you? Once again, totally not a problem if you don't want to."

"Sure, why not."

Pauline hugs her!

Hug!

She's not really sure how one ranks hugs, but she feels like she gives solid ones. Maybe 8/10 sort of hug quality, here.

Pauline gives no indication of whether this was a Good Hug that would cause her to reach the highest echelons of Hug Quality. 

"So break for lunch," Pauline says, "and then we'll have you fill out your request forms, so I know exactly what kind of person to match you with."

"Alright!"

She was kind of just assuming that they were going to match her with whoever was interested in her, given that she is not really in a terrific bargaining position, but maybe they want to weed out definite no's for efficiency reasons.

If they're just trying to weed out the obvious "no"s then their forms are waaaaay too extensive for the purpose.

Appearance! Gender! Sexual orientation! Religious and political beliefs! Occupation (which includes a section for vetoing people with unethical professions)! Dietary preferences! Quiet or loud! Night owl or early riser! Hobbies! Favorite books! An extensive list of disabilities, with the option to write in other disabilities she prefers or has dealbreakers about! Love languages! Number of children, and if she says "yes" to "has children" or "wants children" then she can go fill out form 2A on parenting preferences!

This could be kind of interesting if taken as a purely hypothetical exercise which will produce zero real-world results!

Male, not a rabid antitheist, not personally an abortion doctor or Planned Parenthood employee, should probably speak English with something approaching fluency, capable of carrying on an interesting conversation but if it can't be aloud then that's whatever, ever enjoys fiction but if it's not books that's OK, not violently opposed to children (and if they do have them then her parenting opinions are far more extensive than her opinions on partners).

Kind.

...makes her feel safe and valued and want to be a better person. In an ideal world. In this one it's whatever.

And Pauline will hand her a check for ten thousand dollars and say "thank you so much, dear, we'll be in touch when we find someone!"

"Thanks so much!"

That was fun! Time to deposit the check and pay off medical fees and then save the rest very responsibly, because she's never getting anything like this ever again! And then it's time to return to her routine of working three jobs and completely forget about any momentary mild lapses in sanity that have occurred in the past two days.

Two days later, she gets a phone call from Pauline. 

"Is now a good time? I think we found someone for you."

What the heck.

"Sure! I can come over whenever," she says, because she doesn't actually have a plan for what she's supposed to say in situations like this.

"Okay, I'll see you tomorrow at 9am!"

"Cool! See you!"

She calls her cousin and tells her where she's going again and reiterates very thoroughly what should be done if she disappears off the face of the earth.

"First thing, we'll have you sign this non-disclosure agreement."

The non-disclosure agreement would like Karen to know that if she mentions anything that she finds in this file to anyone, she will be Extremely Sued. 

"So just things in that file, and not any things I know now? Because I did tell some people where I was going in case anyone decided to kidnap me. For reasons."

"Of course! We're trying to protect the privacy of our wealthier clients, not trying to stop you from taking measures to keep yourself safe."

"O-kay."

NDA read over and signed.

And she gets to look at the file!

Lev Aarons. Billionaire Marriage Brokers's name is mostly marketing fluff, but Lev is the real deal, one of the youngest billionaires in the world. He founded Yenta, which is best-known for using the world's first successful dating-site algorithm.

Professionally taken photos that don't stop him from looking profoundly uncomfortable. Personality test: 95th percentile openness, 90th percentile conscientiousness, 5th percentile extroversion, 60th percentile agreeableness, 99th percentile neuroticism. Daily life: he works ninety hours a week, half on Yenta and half on the Aarons Foundation, which gives money mostly to global health and development, but also to pandemic prevention and the development of lab-grown meat; in his spare time he reads science fiction novels and comics; there is a notable absence of any reference to friends. Expectations for his partner is mostly a list of 'no's: Karen will not be expected to exercise, to maintain a certain weight, to go to parties, to help with the business, to talk to Lev's family, to feign interest in Lev's hobbies. The "no" box on "have sex" is circled with particular enthusiasm. There's a big line through the entire appearance section of his preferences for his partner. In messy handwriting, the section about desired personality says:

-Kind
-Smart
-Likes books
-Gives good hugs

and then a fifth item that was scribbled out.

Aw man.

Aw man.

They're supposed to hand her someone who's really transparently a bad idea to hang out with for reasons that she'd forgotten to think about during the application process, and then she's supposed to say no and go on her merry way and slowly grieve her dying niece and regret forever that she didn't go with that one thing that was probably a scam but which could maybe have saved her.

Reads science fiction novels and comics. Gives money to global health development. Wants to meet someone who is kind, smart, likes books, and gives good hugs.

".... doesn't the guy who made a working dating site algorithm have other methods of obtaining dates?"

"He is very very shy." She opens to the personality test page. "99th percentile neuroticism, 5th percentile extroversion, he can't handle a dating site without having a panic attack."

"Ahhh."

Well.

"So assuming, hypothetically, that my reaction to this information is not 'no, actually, I would rather watch my niece die'..."

"We typically do a one-week trial, followed by a six-month trial. He will cover all your living expenses while you're with him, and all the costs of your niece's medical care. You'll also get two thousand dollars at the end of the first week and forty thousand dollars at the end of the first six months, to compensate you for the disruption to your ordinary life and the risk associated with him rejecting you."

This is both significantly more money than she makes and obviously a solution to her current problem.

Two thousand dollars buys a lot of macaroni. It will still buy a lot of macaroni when she remembers that this is not actually how life works.

"A week is... this isn't super urgent, you could give me two weeks to put vacation time on my calendars so I don't have to lose all my jobs if either of us is immediately sure that this is a terrible idea? And to figure out where to put Connor and Zana in that time?"

"Of course! We do a two-week waiting period normally."

"I suppose this is rather more sensible than asking people to make decisions on the spot."

"You definitely shouldn't make a decision on the spot! Do you have any questions you'd like me to answer?"

" - you can leave in the middle of a trial period, if you have to, you just don't get the money?"

"You'll get a fee based on how much time you spent with him, unless of course he violated our rules against abuse or harassment, in which case you'll get a double fee as an apology. That has never happened, because we are very good at screening, but I hope it's comforting."

"Yeah! Yeah it does." Actually it sounds kind of implausible, but she doesn't think a sniper can take out her cousin before her cousin calls the police without drawing some kind of attention to themselves, should she need to leave and become incapable of doing so. Also Zana is actually dying, and that is not some paranoid fantasy she's spun up.

"I will - have to think about it. I am... tentatively interested."

"Take as much time as you need! There's no hurry!"

"Thanks. I will - think about it for a few days and get back to you."

So she goes back home. She narrates in her head what she is doing and what her plan is, until she successfully remembers that this is an incredibly stupid idea - so stupid as to be insane, the sort of thing they put in your notes when they take you to the mental hospital. 'Patient once tried to solve her problems by marrying a billionaire she had never met.' They will look at her with concern over piles of papers covered in words she doesn't know, and ask her if she remembers why she did this.

- and she will. She will remember that she knew it was stupid, knew it was not going to work, knew that in hindsight having considered it was going to be humiliating, knew the thing couldn't be what it was claiming to be and that even if it was she wouldn't be able to make it work, and she weighed all of that against watching her niece slowly die in front of her, and all of that was as a feather.

She will remember that Lev Aarons looked harmless and sad and that he couldn't think of a better story than being willing to pay thousands of dollars for a hug.

She tucks her niece and nephew in to bed and puts vacation time on her calendars, which she can always cancel later if she comes back to reality, and looks up articles about the Aarons Foundation and its founder.

Lev Aarons looks, if anything, more profoundly uncomfortable in every photoshoot of him she finds online.

Most of the marketing fluff in interviews about Yenta comes from his cofounder, Claire Sullivan. Lev is generally quoted talking about the algorithm, and his quotes have a certain air of being edited down into a soundbite. She finds one unedited interview; he is patient with the interviewer and walks her through exactly how the algorithm works in a way that makes it actually make sense, and completely deflects all her questions about his personal life or even his favorite movies. 

He's published several peer-reviewed journal articles, all in psychology.

The Aarons Foundation gives to polio eradication, vaccination programs, treatment of a bunch of different diseases, agricultural development, and cash transfers. It funds the development of alternatives to animal products and makes large biosecurity grants. There are more interviews about the Aarons Foundation than about Yenta, and nearly all of them consist of Lev talking about why he made particular grants. He is obviously very knowledgeable and very very good at explaining things. In one of the video interviews, he smiles.

Aw man.

Well. If she were going to do this transparently insane thing, she's not going to find an easier person to do it for, and given that she's not going to be able to stop thinking about how she could maybe have saved Zana if she says no, she might as well take the shot and then miss it.

It was super dumb to assume that there wasn't time pressure, she realizes - they probably made the same pitch to fifteen different people and are going to go with the one that says yes first. Billionaires do not go around waiting weeks to avoid inconveniencing particular poor people. It's late, but she emails back the same night and says that she thinks she'd probably like to try the one-week trial thing.

A response comes back very quickly. 

"Great! He's paid for our pampering package but he only wants you to use it if you want to, he mostly just wants you to be comfortable. You can come in tomorrow to sign the paperwork!"

Welp.

She discusses things in very vague non-NDA-breaking terms with Connor and Zana, mostly to explain that they might have to stay with their grandparents for a week in a little bit. Connor wants to know whether she's doing something dangerously stupid or just embarrassingly stupid; she assures him that it's probably the latter but she has contingency plans for the former. 

She heads in between jobs to sign paperwork.

A lawyer wants her to know that she will VERY DEFINITELY not get any of Lev's money other than the money that pays for Zana's care, and that if she tells a journalist about any of this, or tells someone who tells a journalist, or in any way causes a journalist to find out what has happened, she will have to pay a sum that is significantly larger than her entire life savings to date. She can talk about their relationship with her friends and family, though, as long as none of them are journalists and as long as she leaves out the existence of Billionaire Marriage Brokers.

She considers pointing out that her cousin is not a genius but can figure out that if Karen starts dating a billionaire then it is probably because of that Billionaire Marriage Brokers place that she told her might or might not be a kidnapping scheme. Her cousin's not going to talk to anyone important anyway.

(She has decided that they are probably not a kidnapping scheme in the strictest sense of the word, on the grounds that ten thousand dollars is a lot of money to pay to kidnap totally random people and that if someone who received a check from them disappears it's going to be so obvious what happened, but she's decided to keep acting like they might be a kidnapping scheme on principle.)

Then the paperwork is signed once the lawyer is VERY CERTAIN she understands that she is not supposed to talk to journalists and she is not going to get Lev's money.

She totally understands these things!

And the two week waiting period begins!

Cool cool cool.

She continues working her slightly unreasonable number of jobs. She tells her parents that she's been roped into a really important thing for church and could they possibly watch Connor and Zana for a week, yes she knows she should have told them earlier but they've been right about her all along and she's a weirdly irresponsible person, see. Yes of course it's just the one week. She updates her cousin on emergency check-in and loss of contact procedures.

She thinks a lot about how this is incredibly stupid and about how the stupidity level doesn't matter. She plays with Zana, who is getting very frustrated that thinking very hard doesn't always make her hands move the way they're supposed to.

She has everything wrapped up in two weeks and then is ready to go wherever.

Then she will have to approach the door of Lev's mansion!

The mansion looks like someone thought it ought to be a gothic castle but was not quite ready to fully commit.

More buildings should be gothic castles, but fully committing takes a level of bravery that might be hard to summon when working with vast sums of money.

She sets her suitcase down for a second and knocks on the door.

Lev opens his door and smiles. "Hi! I'm Lev!"

He blinks in surprise about the absence of children but decides that it is probably a sensible decision not to introduce children to someone you might decide you dislike in a week.

Oh shit she forgot to process the fact that if this wasn't an elaborate kidnapping scheme then she was gonna meet someone who's done lots of really cool things and who is therefore really cool. This is fine. This is fine fine fine.

"Hi! I'm Karen!"

"I can show you where you'll be staying?"

"Yeah, that sounds great!"

She picks up her suitcase and follows him inside.

The bedroom is small and cozy and has a loft bed and some minimalist furniture. 

"I didn't know what kind of gaming posters you liked," Lev says apologetically.

" - oh! That's fine, I wasn't expecting - they asked so many questions that I was just sort of taking them as abstract hypotheticals, it wasn't an official wish list or anything. This is great."

"I think they were? Supposed to be that. But I'm not going to get you a bedroom that's less what you want."

"It's really nice!" Oh hey, is this a chance to sprinkle the conversation with various conversational hooks, just in case they don't have enough of those? They definitely don't have enough of those. "I like Pokémon games. And Zelda and Fire Emblem, I guess, though I haven't played those in - a while. Pokemon's great, though, you don't get stuck like you do in other games. And Zana and Connor love them, so - liking stuff that they like is nice."

"Oh cool! I don't really play video games? But I have heard good things about Pokemon."

Oh god is she going to hate him because he doesn't play video games. 

"Honestly I don't much either, these days? It's - one of those things I'd like doing if I had time, and then I never have time. Mostly audiobooks on commutes and print books for bedtime stories sometimes, lately."

Also console games cost money she doesn't have. And she's gonna strategically leave out the dozens of Steam games on her computer that she bought for fifty cents apiece so he doesn't think she's a lazy weirdo who never does anything else.

"That's cool! Maybe you'll have more time for games now. What kinds of books do you read?"

"Mostly science fiction? And fantasy. And histories, I do read about real life sometimes. And random pieces of lots of the books I shelve, though if you read more than a page or so each time people tend to notice."

"...I should show you my library."

"Yeah, I'd love to see it!"

"But first I should show you the rest of your rooms."

The second room is a playroom. It was stocked by a person who doesn't know anything about the children they're stocking the room for, but has both a lot of money and the ability to Google "what do children like." There's a basketball hoop and Legos and a microscope and a kit that lets you make cool things out of circuits and a remote-controlled BB-8, for Connor; there's Lincoln Logs and Magna-Tiles and a pretend workbench and scratch-and-sniff markers and a pretend picnic basket, for Zana. Each of them has a shelf of books: Connor's has the Phantom Tollbooth and the Hobbit and Dealing with Dragons, while Zana's has the Cat in the Hat and The Monster At The End Of This Book and Rosie Revere Engineer.

" - oh gosh."

Well.

" - I mean I didn't bring them, I figured you were probably not looking to deal with a whole - this is really nice."

"Kids are cool. And I don't-- it sounded like from your file they are a big part of your life."

He ponders saying something about having always wanted kids but then decides that would come off as pressure-y or something.

"They are, yeah. I mean I figured they told you that, I just didn't - this is really nice. And they are cool. Like, kids in general are cool, but they're cool even as kids go. I am of course hopelessly biased."

"I bet they are cool! --I'm sorry, the file didn't say anything at all about what they liked, if it turns out Zana likes princesses and makeup kits I'll have to get a bunch of new stuff."

"Her current obsessions are dragons and astronomy. She only likes princesses if I give them magical weapons or make them the regents of kingdoms with complex political problems, like gnomes and skeletons not getting along."

"She sounds like an amazing kid!"

"I think so. I - should probably let them actually stay with their grandparents for a week and not drag them off to new places with zero warning, but I hope you get to meet them anyway."

"Me too!" Maybe if this all works out they can live here with us, he doesn't say. "I can show you the library if you want?"

"Sounds good!"

It is probably not possible to spend a billion dollars entirely on books but Lev has clearly made a good-faith effort to do so. 

There are a lot of academic books about psychology and neuroscience, and a lot of comics and fantasy and SF. The nonfiction is organized by the Dewey decimal system; the fiction by a system of Lev's own invention. Some categories are normal if specific ("alternative history", "steampunk") and some are not ("sexual-harassment romances", "dragon books"). All the DC superhero comics seem to be categorized based on whether the author gets Batman, and Venom appears to have been classified as an LGBT comic. 

Wow.

(Oh wow, she can actually read actual real DC comics and not just fandom wiki pages.)

"Wow. You have - improbably good taste."

"I have terrible taste! The only shelf in here where I've read all the books is the Extruded Fantasy Product shelf."

"Hey, if you know what you're about." Eeee this is such a good library. " - I don't want to mess up your system or anything, should I just - take notes before taking anything, or - anything I shouldn't touch - "

"Shelly-- she's the maid-- she keeps stuff organized. I mean, you can reshelve the books if you want to, there's nothing wrong with not making messes for the maid to clean up. But you can just leave anything you're reading on a chair and she'll take care of it."

"OK!"

Then she will take entirely too many comics. Batman and Green Lantern and oh man does he have those old ridiculous Superman comics that are impossible to find in real life. She's not even actually a comics person.

She'll stop when she has a good-sized stack that isn't too large for her to be extremely responsible with. She intends to return everything in exactly the condition she got it in.

Lev has opinions! That one is good, that one is crap, that one's author was really much much better in her run on Spiderman, that one is well-written but the art style ugh.

Ooooh, opinions. These are super welcome because she has precious little idea what she's looking for.

"I've hardly read any actual comics stuff. I like the cartoons but it's always so hard to find comics for a reasonable price, and the continuities are always so - I mean I'm sure they make enough sense to follow them once you know what you're doing, but I super don't."

"...I think you might regret saying that," Lev says, already starting to search through his shelves of comics.

"I have heard that they take some effort to untangle. Very convenient how I have an expert here."

Her comics pile may be about to double in size while Lev debates whether this or this is a better starter book and whether or not that should go after that.

"Um. I mean. You don't have to read these if you don't want to?"

"No no it's fine! I can always put stuff back if I don't like it."

Or if she runs out of brain after this, but then she'll be out a brain and still have Batman comics, which is strictly better than the alternative.

Then he can definitely spend most of the afternoon Having Opinions About Comics with all the puppyish enthusiasm of a person who has never actually gotten to share their comics opinions with anyone before.

Awww! Then she will be here to listen. He's pretty obviously enjoying himself, and she's not having a terrible time either, so.

(Aw man, she's already completely forgotten to be paranoid. The counterfactual kidnappers would have been so successful.)

Eventually she will run out of brain space to store comics information in and ask if he is maybe possibly planning to grab some food at some point.

"Oh yeah! Dinner! Sorry. What do you want?"

"Oh gosh. I dunno. Anything really?"

"I have a cook! She can make you whatever you want! --In practice she makes me a lot of Kraft mac and cheese with hot dogs in it, but you know."

Oh no he's adorable on this axis too.

" - I like American Chinese and Italian and most kinds of fruit and milkshakes and those fancy grilled cheese sandwiches with onions and bacon in them and eating breakfast food at incorrect times of day. When I eat things at restaurants and stuff. In practice I eat a lot of Kraft mac and cheese and am too lazy to put hot dogs in."

"I'm going to tell Edith to make blueberry pancakes," he says, texting her.

"That sounds great. Ideal, even."

"We can eat in the dining room or the library or the movie theater, whatever you want." He usually eats at his desk because he's working but he will leave that out.

"Well, I don't want to accidentally hurt your books, so not here. I guess seeing the dining room would be a good thing to do at some point anyway?"

"I read my books while I'm eating, if they aren't really old or really valuable, you can do that too."

"Maybe when I get used to having this many around. But thanks! That's good to know."

- oh man does he have really old books. She can explore the library in its entirety later, she decides.

"...can I give you a hug?"

"Yeah!" 

Her brain thinks this is a slightly weird time, but it thinks most times are slightly weird, so this is convenient, actually, she won't have to identify potential hug moments herself. And Lev seems pretty cool? Honestly very weirdly cool for someone who thinks he has to pay people to spend time with him.

She sets her pile of comics on a chair and gives him a hug.

Hugs!

Karen is, as reported, excellent at hugs. 

"...I haven't actually gotten a hug since I was"-- he counts back in his head-- "ten, I think?"

" - that's horrible."

- that was maybe an excessively blunt way to say that but it is. Hug hug hug apparently there is a desperate need.

"Nope, I'm wrong, Claire hugged me after our IPO."

"That's not strictly worse but it's one of those things where the clarification makes the direness of the overall situation even more apparent."

"You know, there are lots of people who are lonely and can't pay people to be their friend."

"Only because our society isn't good enough, for most of them. Or because there aren't enough of me to put five of us in every nursing home in the world and have any left over to adopt all of its disabled children. That's - way too long to go without hugs for someone who ever wants hugs."

"I should be grateful. I mean. To get hugged at all."

"You have excessively low hug availability standards. And I find it totally implausible that you actually have to pay people to hang out with you, I've known you for like three hours and it didn't take me all three of them to figure out that you were adorable."

- aaaaaaaaa.

He has a tiny and heartbreaking smile.

She probably doesn't mean it. He is, after all, paying her to say nice things to him and give him hugs and talk to him about comics. But it is really nice to hear anyway.

"People don't usually. Like me. Very much. Unless they are Claire or my employees."

"Well, that's silly of them. I refuse to believe the entire planet has such poor taste. You should test it again. Sometime. If you want. I can't tell you how to live your life." Pause. "I need to do some math to determine how many extra hugs you need to make up for like thirteen hugless years, but I do think it might be impractical to try fixing it all in one go."

"Maybe you can stick around for a bit and make up for it?" He sounds uncertainly hopeful.

"Maybe I can." 

This honestly mostly depends on Lev, given the givens, but she doesn't want to sound super pathetic. Better to only be moderately pathetic.

Snuggle snuggle hug.

Coincidentially, Lev thinks it mostly depends on Karen. 

"Honestly, this has been one of the best afternoons of my life."

Lev really needs to have some better afternoons.

"Well. Hopefully you'll have more like it."

"I hope so too!"

To pancakes!

To pancakes!

Karen is pretty easily impressed by pancakes. It helps that she hasn't been to a restaurant in months.

Edith is also pretty good at pancakes!

She leaves out the nice maple syrup in a fit of optimism, even though as always Lev drowns his pancakes in the fake kind where high fructose corn syrup is the first ingredient.

Karen does, in fact, like real maple syrup, though she doesn't ever buy it because it costs, like, money. She pays high compliments to Edith.

Edith is pretty easily won over by people who compliment her cooking, even if they appeared mysteriously one day despite the fact that Lev never leaves the house and that's kinda suspicious. 

Yeah she's probably pretty suspicious. Less suspicious than the organization that dropped her off here, but still probably pretty suspicious. 

She happily eats her pancakes and then asks if she should take her dishes back to the kitchen herself.

"Oh, don't worry, I'll get them," Edith says from the kitchen. 

"OK! Thanks so much!"

She's not suuuuper sure what they're supposed to do now but maybe Lev will save her.

Lev is going to go for broke on Normal Human Experiences He Has Never Had. 

"...I haven't actually ever watched a movie with a person before."

"That's terrible!" she says, but she's smiling. "What do you have?"

"Everything, because I have the Internet."

"Not everything is just on the internet! Like - there's this really great hard science fiction anime about people in the near future who collect space trash to keep it from running into spaceships, and I have never been able to see the ending because it appears to exist solely in the form of boxed DVD sets that cost a couple hundred dollars."

"Correction. I have the Internet and three underemployed employees whom I can get to buy DVDs and rip it to the house server. --I don't really watch anime though so that one might take a day or two. What's the title?"

"Planetes. It's not like a weird anime, it's genuinely the best hard science fiction TV show I've ever seen. Very gentle introduction. But in terms of things you are more likely to have on hand, uh - do you like Pixar?"

Lev texts Shelly that she should put Planetes on the house server when she has time, no rush. 

"I love Pixar!"

"Really! What's your favorite?"

"Shrek, of course."

"Shrek is a very nice Dreamworks movie. Though if we're ranking Dreamworks movies I have to go with How to Train Your Dragon and Prince of Egypt first."

He manages to maintain a straight face for ten seconds before he bursts out laughing.

She smiles. Normally she would worry that someone else was laughing at her for knowing this, but Lev seems like he's probably totally incapable of mocking people for knowing things about good fiction.

"My favorite for Pixar is Wall-E."

"Sorry, I knew that, I was-- it was a joke, I guess it wasn't very funny? My favorite movie is Inside Out but my favorite ten minutes of Pixar is the opening scene of Up."

"No, it was good! I just never know when people don't know things and when things are stealth geek credentials tests. Shrek is a good movie, though, sequelitis notwithstanding. I will fight you on this. It admittedly does not reach the heights of the first ten minutes of Up at any point, but then what does, really."

"Shrek is totally fun! Unfortunately, it caused DreamWorks to become... DreamWorks... so I'm not sure that it's worth it."

"DreamWorks has produced - ok, so they only have three-maybe-four actually good post-Shrek movies, but I think they fulfill an important role in the animated movie ecosystem. Someone has to serve as a cautionary to Disney, lest they ever be tempted to trade in their natural earnestness and sense of wonder for over-reliance on bathroom humor aimed at eight-year-old boys. ...I have actually also not seen the end of Up."

"The end of Up is less good than the beginning of Up, unfortunately, but it's still really good. --Did the kids interrupt you?"

"No! ...Yes. It was a church movie night and Zana ate too much ice cream and threw up and we had to take her home. But anyone could have made that mistake with three years of life experience, really."

- Oh no is he going to think she's a bad guardian for missing how much junk food Zana was eating this one time like a year ago. Probably it's fine. Probably.

"Yes. Three years of life experience. Or twenty-three. Not of course that I would have done that."

Awww.

"Of course not."

"I definitely consistently have better decision-making abilities than the average three-year-old!"

"Having spent a year with a three-year-old, I believe you. It would take a lot for the averages not to work out in your favor."

"Shall we watch Up?"

"Sounds good to me."

Lev has a screen the size of a movie theater screen! And a comfy couch! And popcorn and movie theater candy! He is very proud of all of this. 

Karen is appropriately impressed with this setup! 

She has no idea whether it's a good idea to attempt to cuddle Lev during this movie. She's going to assume that they're not cuddling-during-movies friends yet because the alternative sounds slightly terrifying. Hug count be darned. She has a whole week.

She gets herself some over-buttered popcorn and settles in to watch Up.

Lev starts offering a running commentary on Easter eggs and authorial intent in Up, pauses the movie, turns on subtitles, and then continues pointing things out.

Then Karen will thoroughly enjoy herself, and also have enough to think about that she can, for once in her life, avoid spiraling into despair over what future effects of all the things she's doing or not doing will be.

The ending of Up is cute. It's not as heartbreakingly amazing as the first ten minutes, but it is cute.

"...Sorry, I had no idea I talked that much during movies."

"No, it's way better like this! What would be the point of watching them with other people if you didn't get to hear what they thought of them?"

"I'm glad you liked it! --See you tomorrow?"

"Yeah! See you tomorrow!"

And she hugs him, because he's still going to need a lot more hugs to get caught up.

Hugs!

And then he goes back to his suddenly very empty bed, emails Claire and the head of the Aarons Foundation that he's met somebody so he'll be working less for the next while, curls into a ball, and starts mentally replaying the afternoon and thinking about all the horribly embarrassing things he said. 

Karen has way more important things to do than think about all of the embarrassing things she said. She gets her pile of comics and reads about Batman and - 

- gets about halfway through the first one before she notices that she's crying and vaguely feeling like her life is completely over. Because it is. She is never going to get to do any more things that are not this, ever, unless and until she fails, because giving up would be killing Zana, and because there's nothing wrong with Lev, at all, he's nice and he's a nerd and he's terribly hug-deficient and he made a play room for her four-year-old and he eats Kraft macaroni and cheese.

She has no excuse not to do this. Therefore she has to, and has to keep doing it as long as he lets her. It would have been cool if they could have been friends without her having to give up any expectation of ever doing anything else ever, or without her having to give up all credibility by being paid for the supposed service. In an ideal world. In this one it's whatever.

She puts the comics away and texts her cousin and tucks herself in to bed. She cries until she gets tired of it, and then she goes to sleep.

In the morning Lev has responses to his email. The Aarons Foundation head says congratulations and most things aren't super-urgent but they really do need the final decision on the tuberculosis grant by the end of the week. Claire says to keep her posted so that she can rearrange the work if she has to and that he has accumulated nearly six months of paid time off by this point and he might want to consider taking some of it, which is how you say "I'm happy you've met someone" in Claire. 

He opens up a few spreadsheets full of statistics and starts trying to figure out why the social desirability bias metrics have stopped working and what he can do to fix them. Cereal appears as if by magic at his elbow and he eats it without paying any attention. 

Karen wakes up and considers curling up with some comics before remembering that she's, like, being paid to be a trial spouse type person who should probably be available and approachable if she wants this to continue for any length of time. Also the dining room is a fine place to read her comics.

She makes her bed herself and takes her comics to the dining room and sees whether she can find Edith.

Edith is reading some comics in the kitchen. "Hello, Karen! Do you need something?"

"I'm good! I was going to get some breakfast. I can get it myself unless you have a system you don't want me to mess up."

"Oh, go ahead! It's here for you. You have a kitchen in your rooms too, if that's easier."

"Ooh, cool. I can check it out later. I wanted to make at least a token attempt not to be a recluse while I'm here, though."

She finds some eggs to scramble and makes herself some breakfast. She washes all of the dishes she uses herself.

Edith glances up and sees that she's washing the dishes. "You don't have to do that, I'm paid to wash the dishes."

" - oh, sorry! Habit. I'll get out of your way. Thanks for letting me use your kitchen, though."

"It's your kitchen for as long as you're staying here!" she says cheerily.

"Well, thank you."

Annnd she will just take her comics to the library and read them. Maybe mess around on the internet and post some halfhearted freewriting to her blog, which she has told no one about at any point because it is supposed to be entirely private and have zero connection to her actual real life, except insofar as her real life inspires writing.

Lev is probably doing important things so she figures she shouldn't bother him. She does make good progress on the pile of comics, though.

The thing about flow states is that it is really hard to notice how much time is passing when you're in them or think "hey, I got a person who's supposed to be hanging out with me, maybe I should check up on them."

Lunch appears and is eaten.

Karen hasn't had extended periods of free time in several months anyway, so hey, this is an opportunity to read things and sporadically write and play some of those games that she bought for fifty cents and then never had time to look at. A week of nothing will drive her crazy, but one day of nothing is probably restorative, apart from the mild worrying that she might be losing time with which to make a good impression on Lev. But he wouldn't want her to bother him while he's working, so.

For lunch, she asks Edith whether she knows how to make grilled cheese sandwiches with onions and bacon in them, and if so whether she can watch her make them so that she can figure out what order all the steps go in.

Edith does and is happy to show her!

She seems to have decided Karen is Good People, so if she wants to find out more about Lev now's her chance.

This does not actually occur to her as a thing that she can do. She's mostly trying to make friends-or-acquaintances with Edith because failure to do so sounds like it would be uncomfortable and depressing, and also Edith is Very Good.

She does ask how long Edith has worked here, in an attempt to make conversation.

"Only about a year! He went through three cooks before me, because they kept trying to make him escargot and things of that nature."

She laughs. "He seems really - easygoing is the wrong word. Unpretentious."

"He's definitely the easiest boss I've ever had. Never gets angry, mostly wants the same kind of food you'd serve for your family, never invites people over-- well, until you. Only problem is that he won't eat of his own accord. Half the time when I take a weekend off it turns out he just didn't eat for two days!"

"Oh dear. I guess at least that way you know your job is very important."

When she has made sufficient progress on project Bond With Edith, she will return to the library to read. She takes a break from the comics at some point and cracks open one of the less intimidating psychology books, eventually, just so her brain doesn't totally turn to mush. She thinks whether she fits the 'smart' criterion on Lev's list of desired qualities is pretty debatable, but maybe she can fake it if she reads enough.

If it gets to be six or so then she will begin making plans to maybe figure out where Lev is at some point.

Edith is carrying some food to his office and can point her the right way!

"Oh, hi Karen," he says. "What time is it?"

"Sixish. I know you work a lot so if you're in the middle of something that's fine, though."

"Uh, no, nothing that can't wait. There are too many men that are exactly six feet tall on Yenta and this is a problem but I'm not going to solve it tonight."

"That does seem fairly hard to solve without secret measurement police. Or requiring people to submit pictures of themselves next to tape measures instead of just filling in a text field. But yeah, uh, I read some of the comics! Didn't make it through all of them but there were some that were really good."

"Usually this isn't a problem, actually, we have ways to figure out if people are lying and we can adjust for it! But now there are too many six foot tall men and that means someone knows how to game the system but I'm not sure how. --Oooh, which one?"

She is happy to discuss the results of her comics exploration. She likes Batman even more now and is sort of going to ignore large swaths of Green Lantern canon. She understands that ignoring large swaths of canon is traditional in this medium.

Lev is pretty convinced that this is because of his wisdom in only giving her comics off the Authors Who Understand Batman shelf. 

Green Lantern canon is ridiculous.

"Yeah! So I pretty much just read all day. I guess I might eventually have to find something else to do while you're at work, but for the next, you know, couple days, the library is probably enough of an attention sink that I can neglect to do this. Oh, and I started making friends with Edith, I think. She's nice."

"That's good! Edith's cool! You should feel free to interrupt me if you want to, I get sort of caught up in things but I'm pretty sure if you got me to stop working Claire would send you a fruit basket."

"I see. I'll consider it. It's good that you like what you do, though."

"It's pretty great! I made Yenta as an intellectual exercise and then Claire was like 'if you make a website I will handle all the boring parts of running the business' so I did and then two years later she was like 'you should drop out of college' and I was like 'why' and she was like 'because your net worth is a hundred million dollars.'"

"Wow. That's - a way to do things, I guess."

"I am insanely lucky."

"I mean it takes luck and skill, to make something like that happen. Definitely luck, but also skill, I'm pretty sure."

"It's not like I worked for it? I'm smart in a way where people give you way too much money for being it, but that's like... genetics, it's nothing I did. And I'd totally have founded Yenta for free. It's not working hard, it's like if people gave me a bunch of money for watching movies or something." He shrugs. "I have done nothing to deserve this but I'm using it to save babies from dying so probably it all works out okay in the end."

"I mean I hear you do a lot of work on the saving babies from dying front, too, so I feel like that counts for something."

"That's also fun! It's not like I'm working fast food. I think people who work fast food should be billionaires and I should be making ten bucks an hour."

"Something something supply and demand. Maybe in the sci-fi future where we all have equal skills on every axis except enduring misery they will be - probably millionaires, I think there are more fast food workers than there are Lev Aaronses in the world, so billionaires might be pushing it."

(None of her jobs actually pay ten bucks an hour. She's been holding out hope for the library branch assistant position someday, though, that one pays $12.52.)

"Too bad, because if there's anything that means you deserve a billion dollars, it's getting screamed at by some lady because you gave her a medium chicken nuggets instead of a large."

"Y'know honestly the overwhelming majority of people are much nicer than that."

- aw wait crap that's gonna make her sound pathetic.

"I know, but it only takes one to ruin your entire night! --Or at least mine."

"Ehhh, you build up mental callouses eventually. Not that I particularly know how much time you've spent working in fast food over the course of your life."

He thinks. "Three years?"

- huh, that doesn't sound like a joke or anything. 

"Much longer than me. I bow to your superior expertise."

"I think you've spent more time having crappy jobs in general than me, though, so really I should bow to your expertise."

"Well the secret, grasshopper, is to get out of fast food and the supermarket and then split your time between libraries and nursing homes, with perhaps the occasional babysitting or cleaning gig. There are more kids who want to work in libraries than there are library jobs, so you do have to stalk the library's help wanted page for a period of several months to a year and apply like a kazillion times. That will get you through normal life situations, up until your niece is diagnosed with some rare only possibly treatable disorder, at which point a woman will fall out of the sky and connect you with a version of Batman who saves people from malaria instead of superpowered villain rampages, and he will pay you to talk about comic books. Results may vary, but in the best case I have to recommend this plan pretty highly."

- that's - that's better, right, than just dancing around it forever? If she's a person who's here for reasons and who has a life that went on before this and not some random person who's probably being payed to play a part?

Lev has no idea how to respond to any of this. 

"Libraries are really good."

Aaaaaah gah that was stupid that is the worst possible way to respond to someone saying their niece might be incurably sick--

"They really are! They're like - I think there are a bunch of problems that libraries aren't really intended to solve, but they're very often the closest thing we have to a solution anyway? They just - they take a lot of pressure off of people who would otherwise have very few options, and they do a lot to lessen the gap between motivated people without resources and people who have entire libraries in their houses. - sorry if all that before was - we were sharing, I guess."

"Sorry I. I'm not really sure what to say. I. I'm way less cool than Batman."

" - well Batman doesn't exist, so I think you beat him there. I think he's also less of a nerd."

"Also if I were Batman, fuck the not-killing rule, I'd just shoot Joker. --But uh. I don't actually know what's up with Zana. I know it's medical stuff with an unpredictable price but that's it. Confidentiality stuff."

"Ah. I just kind of assumed you knew everything - you knew the answer I gave to the bedroom question, and stuff - "

"I asked about that! Because I didn't want to give you a crappy bedroom."

"I see! It was nice, it's a nice bedroom. Uh. Zana has - I'm sorry, I don't even know if you want to hear about this."

"You don't have to tell me, but I'm happy to listen if you want to."

" - she, uh, has a degenerative condition that affects the entire nervous system. You lose motor control, then your senses, then cognition. Untreated she has - probably five years, probably not ten."

"Well. Fuck.

...I'm glad I can help."

"Yeah! I'm, uh, glad you can, too. Obviously."

"I don't know what to... say or do at all."

"No, no, that's fine. Someone to help navigate paying for the medical care stuff would be appreciated, I guess? Possibly if - I mean I guess you probably don't know yet whether you want me to keep hanging out here."

Oh god, he's a horrible person, he is literally holding a dying four-year-old hostage for hugs. 

"...if you want to keep hanging out with me then I want to keep hanging out with you?" But of course she does because it's her fucking kid.

"Sure! Totally. I was just thinking that I, uh, don't actually have anyone else to keep Connor and Zana with long-term? So - I feel really weird asking if you'd be OK with them living here, given that you're the one paying for services here, and that you've known me for like two days, but - as long as we're having really weird conversations about our problems anyway."

Mostly her problems but whatever.

"Of course! I like kids. --Uh, I think."

" - OK. I can, uh, call them and give them nonzero time to think about it, then."

"They'll probably need like. Bedrooms? They can definitely come over during the day though until the bedrooms are ready."

"They're, um, not really in this state right now?"

"Yeah, I guess that probably would be way too much time on planes."

"Yeah. I mean, I don't think they'd mind hanging out in my room for a while, but if you think it'd be super inconvenient then they can hang out with their grandparents for a while longer."

"It depends on what's good for them, I think? I'm an adult, I'm flexible."

"OK! Great. I'll - see if I can explain anything that's happening to them without sounding like I've gone temporarily insane. ...it actually might be best to wait until the rooms are done purely to counteract the temporary insanity thing."

"Sorry I've made your life so ridiculous!"

He doesn't sound sorry.

"Well. I can hardly complain about the genre shift, under the circumstances."

"Um. I just wanted to say that. ...you're really pretty when you're happy."

"Well. Thank you."

- she should be worried about this or something, this is objectively a worrisome thing to say, under the circumstances. Probably she'll be very worried about this later.

"What do you want to do for the rest of tonight? --'Go hang out by myself' is fine."

"I do occasionally enjoy hanging out by myself! I tend to be good on that front after ten hours, though. I'm up for whatever."

Then there shall be more movies! And not cuddles. 

More movies and not cuddles sounds good! 

Later she can call Connor and tell him that she... has a new job in a different city and since it's summer it'll hopefully not be hugely disruptive if he and Zana move out here in a couple weeks. Not like right-right now, but in a bit. Maybe.

The next day she will... wander around the library and mildly regret not asking whether there are, like, specific times when she should be sure to be in the house or something. She's sort of mildly unclear what her situation is but Lev is probably not the sort of person who would expect her to stay in his house at all hours of the day. Probably. So... library.

Lev is spending all day thinking about tuberculosis!

It does not occur to him that Karen might think she needs his permission to go somewhere.

This is good, because it would probably shake his confidence in her ability to take care of herself without him having to think about it or go to any trouble. Really it's already ridiculous to think that scooping someone out of not-quite-poverty and saving their niece and giving them the chance to do stuff they'd have liked to do anyway, if they'd ever had time, is the sort of thing that makes sense to think of as a job and not an ill-considered charity project, but she would like to avoid being extra inconvenient on top of the ways in which she's already sort of inconvenient by default. He doesn't need to care about forty thousand dollars or a few hundred thousand in medical costs, so all she has to do to stay here is - not be more inconvenient than not having her here. Probably.

She reads. She looks up churches in the area, because she is going to have to go to church at some point. She tries to figure out what school district the not-castle is in. She realizes that she has a bunch of free time with which to learn things now, and gets like halfway through the first lesson of an online Spanish course before she gets bored. She tries working on a novel but doesn't make any real progress. She'll probably go find Lev around dinnertime again, if he doesn't pry himself away from his work any sooner than that.

He doesn't but he sure is happy to see her when she shows up!

"Hi! What did you get up to today?" 

"Mostly reading! I tried starting a foreign language course but it turns out I don't have the patience for it right now. You?"

"Mostly reading about multidrug resistant tuberculosis, which I realize is the world's single most boring topic."

"Sounds sort of fascinating, honestly. Or at least like it would be if I had any of the foundational knowledge I'd probably need to understand it."

"I mean, if you want, I can teach you about the world's most stunningly boring topic, but I warn you it is in fact stunningly boring."

"No, no, if you've been bored all day then I'm sure I can fulfill my desire to read about the creation of new and improved horrifying diseases on my own time. - speaking of which, just wanted to check, are there specific times you're hoping for me to be around, besides evenings? In case I ever want to randomly go to the park or something."

Haha yes that was only moderately awkwardly shoehorned in, she's so good at this for someone who's actually incredibly terrible at it.

"I mean if you have somewhere to go in the evenings that's fine? You don't have to stop having a life now that you've moved in here. It might be nice to generally have an idea of what your schedule is so that if you're super-busy for a week I'm not like 'where is Karen, was she eaten by a bear?' --Okay, I think there was a misunderstanding about tuberculosis. I think it is super-interesting, I like teaching people things, I am worried that you would be bored because basically no one is interested in the things I'm interested in."

She sort of has in fact stopped having a life, because her existing life is in a really different place. Also a schedule, because all of her previously scheduled activities are happening across the country from here. She can't think of a way to say this that doesn't sound like she's complaining, so she skips it.

"It doesn't sound like a boring topic, if you want to explain it, and then in the future I'll have a better sense of how right or terribly wrong you probably are when you declare things super interesting or stunningly boring. I will try not to expect it to be as interesting as other terrifying diseases, so I'm not too disappointed."

"...Wait, your entire life is in St. Louis, isn't it. Shit, I'm sorry."

"- yeah. Yeah it is a little bit. But it wasn't the most stunningly exciting life ever, I can probably whip up a different one. Just don't have one ready to go right this second."

"I feel like a terrible person for leaving you to be bored all day!"

"I think you may be confused about what boredom is. Some people think it's a nice thing to occasionally stop working twelve-hour days to catch up on their reading instead. It's - not what I'm going to spend my life doing, but two days of reading is not exactly a hardship."

"That's good! --If I can help you get more of a life here, I want to do that. I guess if your kids move in that will help."

"Probably! I might end up just being a full-time caretaker for Zana. Or - possibly get a job of some kind, unless you think that would look really weird to any hypothetical observers who might be observing. But maybe I won't have time anyway." Given that she's sort of lost her entire real-life support network and with it all of the people who could watch Zana during the day, so that's fun. Lev could probably hire someone but that would require asking Lev to hire someone, which would be sort of a weird thing to ask Lev to do just so that she can go out and probably be paid less money for whatever she could possibly do out of the house.

"I'm not the famous kind of billionaire. No one cares what I'm up to. If you want to work in a library or something that is totally doable. But we'd probably have to get Zana a nanny unless she goes to preschool?"

"Yeah, see, and that just seems sort of silly, given that you'd probably have to pay someone more to watch her than I'd get from working anyway. - not that that probably matters to you, I guess. I might not actually know how to judge the practicality of various options when money isn't supposed to be a consideration."

She doesn't even actually know whether money is supposed to be a consideration. It's not her money.

"Lots of people would go crazy without having a job. I would. And I don't think it's crazy to want to avoid a big resume gap that you'd have to explain away as the time an eccentric billionaire paid you to live in his house and talk to him about comic books."

"Yeah, I was going to bring that up, and then I realized that all the jobs I'm qualified for are not the sorts of jobs where people care about resume gaps anyway. But the going crazy might be a - minor consideration."

"I like you! I don't want you to go crazy."

"Well then. I shall endeavor to remain sane."

The next few days are fine - not eventful, but fine. She rewrites her resume and looks up job postings, trying to find something that doesn’t sound very horrible. She finds a church and attends it on Sunday and crosses it off her list when the pastor assets that the resurrection is probably just about how Jesus is metaphorically alive in our hearts. She watches movies with Lev and in general notes that he is just, like, very improbably fine as a person, particularly a person who thinks that getting hugs through a company called Billionaire Marriage Brokers is something resembling a good idea.

She calls her parents and gets her mom and asks her to put Connor on. Her mom does not put Connor on.

     “I can’t believe you lied to us, Karen. Something for your church.”

 Her heart sinks into her stomach. “Mom - "

      “I want you to tell me exactly where you are and what you’re doing.”

 “I’m in San Francisco. Or, like, outside it - "

     “Where in San Francisco, Karen.”

She pauses for too long. She doesn’t want to lie but - they have Connor and Zana - she shouldn’t have asked them to watch them - she doesn’t know who she should have asked but she shouldn’t have asked her parents, not if she was going to do this - 

Why did the lawyers even bother telling her that she can talk about The Relationship to her friends and family, everyone in the universe is going to know from two seconds in that it isn’t a real relationship because nobody from this corner of the world would ever actually care about her, ever, under any circumstances - 

What if her mom decides the only way she can get her back is to go to the police - what if she knows someone vaguely journalist-y and thinks that raising a stink will help somehow, what if Lev isn’t not-famous enough for everyone to think that it’s a waste of time - what even happens to you if you have zero money and you get sued a bunch of money you don’t have, she should probably not even be scared of this because probably debtors' prisons aren’t even a thing anymore, although maybe they’ll garner like seventy percent of her wages for the rest of her entire life or something and she’ll have to be one of those people in movies who’s always running out the back door whenever anyone suspicious comes by because she owes people money she doesn’t have -

Her parents are never going to take her seriously ever, not ever - 

“I’m in a house in Marin,” she says. “Staying with a friend and sending out job applications. You don’t know him.”

      “I know you’re staying with someone named Lev Aarons. Now I assume that’s not the person that Forbes seems to think is a billionaire?”

 She’s silent for too many seconds.

      “Oh, Karen.”

 “ - Kate told you.”

     “What did he offer you to sleep with him?”

“Mom!”

      “If he hasn’t already asked then he’s going to. I know you want to help Zana, we all want to help Zana, but this isn’t a sustainable way of doing that, you’re going to get hurt - "

And her mom says more things that Karen doesn’t remember because her brain isn’t working right after that. She doesn’t remember whether she breaks the NDA. She’s pretty sure she asked about whether her mother could help get Connor and Zana here and is pretty sure that her mother vehemently questioned her ability to be a remotely responsible guardian for either. 

She hangs up in the middle of the conversation, already sobbing, with the words you cannot solve this by whoring yourself out ringing in her ears.

She wishes she could be entirely certain that her mother isn’t just - right. She’s probably nonzero right. Cinderella is a lovely character, but in real life princes don’t marry commoners. Much less do they solve all their problems merely for the joy of their company.

She is such an idiot. She is such an idiot. If she were less of an idiot she would go home right now and go back to work like nothing happened and wait for her mother to drop Connor and Zana off, and then -

And then what, watch Zana wither away and die before her eyes? Justify herself before the Almighty at the end of days by saying that, well, no, Lev never actually asked her to do any immoral things ever, she just let her child die because she was scared that he might?

In the morning she washes her face and dries her eyes and wanders aimlessly around the house for a few hours before working up the nerve to knock on Lev’s door.

"Hey! What's up?"

"Hey!" Man how does she say anything relevant without lying or blowing up the entire world. "So I called my parents about maybe picking up Connor and Zana soon, and they are sooort of skeptical about the idea."

"...I guess that makes sense because this is in fact a moderately sketchy and hard-to-explain situation."

"Yeah. Yes. Moderately."

"Do you think you'll be able to get them or...? I was going to try to finish that sentence with some way I could help but I actually don't have one."

"...Yeah, I give myself like an eighty percent chance of getting them without resorting to actions that would be kidnapping if I were not in fact their legal guardian. Under the circumstances. On the first try."

"I can get you a very good lawyer if you ever think that would help."

"It's - possible it will, at some point. Though I should probably at least try the option where I go to my parent's house and talk this out with them like a sane person. Are you cool if I, uh, take a couple days off from the mental strain of discussing Batman to fly across the country?"

"Why wouldn't I be okay with that?"

"...Because I am here for reasons, and sometimes when people ask you to be in a specific place for a reason, they think that the reason is nonzero important and should ever trade off against other concerns? And it's polite to make sure even if you're pretty sure you know how the calculation works out?"

"I realized that when I decided to do this thing with someone with kids that I was always going to come in second to the kids, that is how having children works."

"OK! Well. That's good. Because you are correct. And because when I am separated from them I start drawing up heist plans."

"Please don't do a heist plan, my lawyers aren't that good."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Oh wow the internal screaming has stopped now. Lev is sort of anomalously good at stopping the internal screaming. This is sort of unexpected, given that he should logically be the source of a lot of it, but it's kind of nice. 

"I'll, uh, look at plane tickets then. I guess."

"You can ask Shelly to do it if you'd rather but you don't have to."

"I, uh." Oh man, three plane tickets on short notice is probably going to wipe out at least half of the two thousand dollars that she's not sure she even technically has yet, maybe all of it. She should probably mention this or something. It's not like the two thousand dollars are that important but they're also sort of all the money she's going to get for the next six months unless she successfully gets a job somehow. But she also can't say that she doesn't have any money, because she does, she has the ten thousand dollars that she really wanted to save. But sometimes we don't get what we want. And there's the screaming again.

"Maybe."

"You look worried, is something wrong?"

"I - uh - I don't super have enough money for last-minute plane tickets. Actually. I mean technically I do, but. Technically."

"...Is there a reason I'm not covering them?"

"Just - I mean I don't know which things I should assume that about. I guess this is a fairly unambiguous example insofar as unambiguous examples exist, given that they wouldn't be flying in if not for - this whole situation, but - sure."

"I guess maybe it wasn't super-clear? I should cover anything you want as long as the thing you want costs less than, I don't know, one hundred thousand dollars. Then we can talk about it."

"......oh."

"I have a lot of money and I like you and I like doing nice things for people I like," he says.

"And it's not like the fact that you're only friends with me for my money will get any worse," he doesn't say.

"Oh. I mean. - yes." She supposes that the fact that he likes her in the general sense of the word is not really new information; you don't really invite people's kids to stay with you indefinitely if you dislike them. "I just - I mean I don't want to assume things? And I don't want it to be - unclear, or anything, at any point, which things are yours, or whether I owe you any money or anything if - I mean I don't want to assume stuff about what's going to happen, either."

Haha, yes Karen, hasten discussion of you getting kicked out of the house when he gets bored, that'll help things.

An emotion flashes across Lev's face too quickly for Karen to see what it is. 

"You don't have to pay me back for anything. If it's in your rooms it's yours, if it's in an account with your name on it it's yours, and if you want something that usually stays in a different room ask me about it?"

"...OK. If you're sure. I will... try to ask for things that make sense and try not to be too paranoid about the skills of your lawyers, then."

"I gave you some credit cards but I can transfer some money into an account of yours regularly if that's easier and makes it less likely that you feel like you're overspending?"

" - I mean it's up to you, really, it's not like it's been a problem?" It's sort of a problem. "Credit cards are - typically more useful for people who have any income, but I'm not really sure how you meant for - I'll just ask Shelly to buy some tickets."

"Uh, sorry, I probably should have clarified? They're set up so I can pay them off?"

"Ah. OK. That's - nice of you."

"It was what was agreed on, I thought? I'd cover your expenses?"

" - well I think I was mostly really clear on the 'you will not at any point get any more money than this' part and much less clear on which things are typically considered living expenses. Which is really nobody's fault."

"I think if we got married and then six months later you divorced me and took half my stuff I would be pretty irritated but that does not mean that I'm going to be like 'no, Karen, you can't go to a restaurant' or whatever."

"Yeah, those - really make sense as completely different things." Haha right this whole thing is happening under the assumption that they're figuring out whether they're going to get married in six months. Right. Totally. "I mean - I know, obviously, that anything I might buy is, like, much less than a rounding error for you? I just - I don't want to make any unwarranted assumptions about stuff like this because if I get it wrong then I actually cannot pay for any of this, at all, in any way."

"I promise that if you buy something thinking that I'm going to pay for it I will not make you pay for it."

"OK. If you promise. Then - thanks."

Hug?

Hug! Hugs are nice. They probably logically shouldn't make her feel better but in practice they totally do.

"So. I should probably leave you to go - save babies and stuff."

"If you want to, but if you want to hang out and be distracted from your parents being awful, I don't actually have anything urgent happening today."

"My parents are not awful. They are, like, moderately justifiably concerned that their daughter is making what appear to be terrible decisions."

"I am very far from an expert on parents but I feel like they should probably give you the benefit of the doubt since you're generally a reasonable person."

"Maybe. I feel like my reasonableness quotient is honestly pretty debatable."

"Well, you seem reasonable to me! Other than the part about hanging out with me, that seems less reasonable."

This would probably make her feel better if hanging out with Lev were not the main thing harming her reasonableness credentials at this time.

"I try. And I hear some people think that watching Pixar movies and talking to your friends about comics are, like, totally sane things to do with your free time."

"...I think they mean with your actual friends though and not with weird lonely rich people."

She thinks of several flippant responses to that and then discards them.

" - you know, I would in fact not be here if there were no money in it, for the same reason that if a country doesn't pay its legislature then the entire legislature will by necessity consist of independently wealthy people? But in an alternate universe where you somehow failed to found Yenta and never got out of fast food, where we are both sad people who happen to live in the same city for some reason, and who occasionally distract ourselves from our sad lives by hanging out at the same comic shop and looking at the clearance rack while I wait for the rest of the D&D club to show up? I think we're friends. Or - I give us fifty-fifty odds, anyway, conditional on us managing to have a solid twenty minutes of conversation at some point."

His smile is grateful, grateful and surprised and a little sad.

"I'm not entirely sure about Fast Food Me's ability to hold a conversation for twenty minutes."

"It's possible that our alternate universe selves have different problems. I believe in them, though."

"It all hinges on whether I'd be socially competent enough to be invited to D&D."

"Oh, no, that's like a given, provided you didn't somehow buy a +3 charisma bonus in this timeline. Mostly it depends on whether I overthink the potential consequences of inviting you."

- actually now she really wants to drag him to a comic shop. Maybe they can find him some less questionable friends. Of course, this would make her really superfluous to him, so maybe she can wait until Zana's been here a week and he's already all attached to her staying alive.

"And on whether I overthink the potential consequences of being invited!"

"Our alternate selves have it rough. - have you ever actually played D&D? I guess probably not. But it's pretty great."

"I've wanted to but, unfortunately, paralyzing social anxiety."

"Right, yeah, I figured. Maybe sometime, though? I'm sure I can find someone else in the world who isn't much more terrifying than I am."

He does not say, "I think the fact that I'm paying you is the active ingredient here."

He says, "probably!"

"Alright. Cool. I'll think about it."

She gets Shelly to buy her a plane ticket and flies out for Kentucky the next day.

It's sort of stressful. She does, it turns out, live in one of the eighty percent of universes where her parents aren't willing to resort to force to keep her away from Connor and Zana, and where Connor and Zana follow her home even when their home has recently moved and their grandparents think that Karen should sit down and talk about this until she changes her mind. She doesn't live in one of the universes where this seems like a foregone conclusion afterwards. Her mother says a bunch of stuff that she wishes had not been said in front of her kids, but sometimes that's life. Mostly it means that Connor figures he shouldn't ask any more questions until Karen has had a day or so to get over being asked unfair questions.

He changes his policy when he sees the house. She totally would answer questions at this point, but Zana has declared it a castle and torn off toward it, and she knows from experience that it's usually a bad idea to put off dealing with Zana.

Zana rams into the front door and falls down. She does not cry, because then people will think that her attack on the castle was an accident. People think a lot of things she does are accidents now.

Lev has definitely not been pacing next to the front door for the past hour because that would be weird. Nope. Total coincidence.

"Hello! I assume you are Zana."

"I am a DRAGON," she informs the weird man inside the castle. He is probably not a king because kings mostly have beards. Maybe he's a prince or a butler or a squire, he looks like he could maybe pull off being any of those. "I am here to take over, if that's OK."

"What do we say before entering people's houses?"

"PLEASE."

"Oh no! My castle is being taken over by a dragon!" Lev says, stepping to one side to let them in. "What am I going to do?"

"You will have to go to the TALLEST tower and ONLY come out when the army saves you," says Zana. 

"But I don't have a tower," Lev objects, "tall or not, and I don't know where I can find an army."